


the abyss also gazes into you

by lightpages



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 18:51:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightpages/pseuds/lightpages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are prison bars between you, blocking your line of sight with unyielding metal, but it’s the clearest you have ever seen each other.</p>
<p>Spoilers for the finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the abyss also gazes into you

In breaking, you have become whole again.

+

You were a glass castle, a precarious balancing act built on a foundation of lies. He had carefully chiseled every inch of it. With every word, he would build up another layer whilst cracking a planned myriad of fault lines into the one beneath. And the glass had been so transparent, so gradual, that you hadn’t noticed how the light filtering through had become ever more and more distorted.

You had been pushed closer and closer to the edge, chased through the dark trees and running fast, faster, even though you knew the cliff was hurtling closer with each step. The shadows of ghosts and their killers had haunted you, had stolen into your dreams until they’d bled through into your waking life. Drops of blood and memories, clinging to your hands; you had never known if the horrible stories reflected in them were your own.

The bars surround you now, cold and straight. Not long ago you might have pictured them to be curved, branched, pointed, attached to a creature with feathers it shouldn’t have and eyes which knew far too much. You would have seen them moving, and seen yourself covering them with blood, so much blood, until you wouldn’t have known if it was yours or someone else’s – but you can see clearly now. You are trapped and imprisoned, but the clarity of the cold truths you see around you is a freedom you have forgotten the feel of. 

Some part of you feels betrayed, feels a wrenching, blank horror at what he’s done. It makes you want to retch, to choke, to tear at your insides and to rip him apart too. But it’s a distant part of you, one blurred nightmare amongst many, and it scares you even more to know that was exactly what he wanted.

You know he has woven deceit into every word he spoke to you. You know he made you into what you are now, and that every move you took was of his making. The designs were always his. Not yours. Never yours. 

Your walls are shattered and broken, and you feel bare and far too sensitive underneath. The images swirl around your head, and his eyes are reflected red in the centre of it all. You’re a conflicted mess, but at least you can’t fall apart again when there’s nothing left to break; you have tumbled over the edge, and now that you are in freefall, you have no more fear of falling. So you channel the vortex down, contain it, until all you can see is him, in painful and breathtaking sharpness.

He smiles when you greet him. You realise it’s the first time you have seen his true self. Just as your walls have been torn down, so have his. There are prison bars between you, blocking your line of sight with unyielding metal, but it’s the clearest you have ever seen each other. There are snakes and demons dancing on his lips, hiding underneath his skin.

A vindictive excitement claws its way up and into the deepest part of your mind: the thrill of the impending chase. You wonder if it’s his doing. It probably is. (Everything is.) You are not a killer, but you have had a killer climb inside your head and tell you what to think. It’s the same thing, really.

+

He has broken you, but you have risen above the pieces, which lie on the ground like fragmented images of a life you can never go back to. He is victorious, but the game continues on. He has won, but you have not yet lost.

The glass on the clock face is broken too. You will take the numbers, order them again until they sit where they should, and the steady tick of the time which defines you will be strong as the prison bars. If you are the minute hand, then he is the other, and the two of you will chase and weave an overlapping dance around each other, never resting, and never escaping. You look into his transparent gaze; he knows it too. 

You smile back at him. You can see yourself reflected in his eyes.


End file.
